Volunteers who take elderly and frail patients to hospital appointments fear having to turn people away if they lose their group’s blue badges.

Drivers for Loughton Voluntary Care last year made 558 trips to people’s appointments, often at central London hospitals, making sure they got to the right departments and waiting with them for their appointments, before taking them home.

To allow the drivers to park close enough to hospitals and clinics for their passengers to walk in, they have previously relied on blue disabled parking badges handed out by Essex County Council.

But the three badges that are shared among the group’s drivers expire on April 30 and the volunteers have been told they will not be renewed, under new government guidelines.

The service’s co-ordinator Janet Thomas said: “It has been a great disappointment that Essex County Council has decided not to renew our three group user blue badges.

“Our clients are frail, usually with mobility difficulties and should not be left alone when at hospital.

“The lack of blue badge will make it impossible for us to take clients to the London hospitals.”

She said the council had told the group its users should apply for their own blue badges, which cost £10 for three years.

But she added: “Many of them have never driven and have not seen the point of getting one.”

She added that despite new guidelines from the government, councils still had discretion over the passes, shown by the fact that the group’s sister organisation, Redbridge Voluntary Care, had been given new ones.

The council’s cabinet member for adult social care, John Aldridge, said: “It was more discretionary when the county council had the ability to issue the blue badges.

“They were generally issued to a home that had its own van.

“There will be a lot of organisations like this and we don’t wish to discourage them, but the new government guidelines say exercise discretion, which seems like a ministerial cop-out.

“It would be very much better if we had greater clout.”

He added that people could now apply for blue badges by filling in a form, rather than needing a physical assessment, as they did before the changes.